I've just acquired an Epson 2580 Photo scanner with a 35mm film loader that I'd like to use.The film loader doesn't work with Linux drivers.

I'm thinking of installing Windows 98SE to put it to work.My spec is Gigabyte GA-7DX+ motherboard, XP2200+,2gb ram (although I'll take out all but 512mb to install W98). VL Light 7.0 is installed on the IDE primary master 80gb drive with standard partitions. I've got an empty 40gb IDE hard drive currently installed as the primary slave which I used for backing up data when first installing VL.

Any ideas how it's possible to install W98 to the second drive and the most efficient way to do it without affecting VL?

W98 is a distant memory.. I'd try to disconnect the HDD with VL, then install W98 to the spare drive. Hook up the VL drive and boot into Linux, may need to boot from a CD to get in, then re-install the boot loader from within VL.

As long as there are NO vfat partitions on your first drive, there should be no problem installing it to the second drive. It is difficult to find drivers to support the peripherals in Win98[SE]. You may want to make your vfat partition first. I still use it quite frequently.

Thanks all.I have it on fairly good authority that it's possible to get the scanner working on Linux but that the film loader won't work, the main reason I want to use it (although I'm fully prepared to be disappointed).

It sounds like I shouldn't hit too many issues.I've managed to locate most drivers I'm likely to need, although I'm not too sure about the Creative Live! 5.1 soundcard, I seem to remember that the W98 drivers on the manufacturers website only work for retail versions and mine's an OEM.

Providing I stick to plan and just use it as I intend, I can live with a few things not working.

It's been years since I booted a windows OS on real hardware, but from what I can remember, windows likes to take over your drive for booting purposes. With that said, I would suggest the same thing that has already been suggested here. Remove the drive that holds your Linux installs, and leave only the drive that will hold windows plugged in (you dont even need to change the jumpers... just unplug the primary master would be ok...unplug its power too). Then install windows as you normally would. When that's done, plug your linux drive back on, and and machine will boot Linux.

Configure your bootloader (use vliloconf if on Vector) and you will be able to boot either or.

Formatted and partitioned 5GB for W98, left the rest unallocated Shutdown, unplugged the first drive and sailed through setup.

It booted into Windows at which point I discovered that the C drive was the whole drive.Went back to VL and GParted which was still seeing the partition I'd created and the unallocated space. Issue... I forgot sdb had a GPT partition table which W98 couldn't see and I needed to create an MBR partition table.

One more try to keep things clean...Created the MBR table and vfat partition and formatted the rest as ext4, this time setup complained there was a problem with the disk before getting to Scandisk. The solution, I aligned the partition to cylinders and added LBA to the boot flag.

From there it was pretty much plain sailing, LILO was intact and easy to configure.It didn't take a lot of tweaking to get Explorer to crash, it seems far more fragile than I remember.The focus now is on getting it to do what I need and no more although I think I'll root around for a better file manager.